OTOP: One Time, One Place. AKA: Ichi go, ichi e, or one life, one meeting. In any encounter there is only one chance. Now is
absolute, tomorrow is only a maybe. Your whole life is in this moment.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Dare to.....LIVESTRONG

You may have noticed that the bathing suit challenge is missing from the side bar over there---->

That's because I suck. I suck at taking care of myself. I excel at taking care of others, considering their lifestyles and how they need to change and what I can do to support them, caring for sick and sometimes dying people, caring for my husband who is a cancer survivor and a newly diagnosed type I diabetic.

I just can't manage to watch what I am eating....monitor how I am physically doing. This BREAKS MY HEART. I have regressed in my health habits and I have to change or else I am going to age ungracefully and feel like shit when I am 40. Even better, the heart attack trifecta of diseases run in my family: high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease. I will die much younger than my goal of 100 years old if I keep this up. I know that we can't control how long we live our lives, but we can certainly do things daily to prolong our stay and make it richer.

This is one of the reasons why I have taken the LIVESTRONG Dare to become healthy again. Here's a description of the program from the LIVESTRONG website, "OUR MISSION: DARE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFEWe believe everyone has the power to make their life better. Our members are people who want to take responsibility and give 100 percent to achieve everyday victories to help themselves and then help others.Demand Media and the Lance Armstrong Foundation built LIVESTRONG.COM as the definitive daily health, fitness and lifestyle destination. Through trusted content, interactive tools and an engaged community, LIVESTRONG.COM will help people take action to make the most of their life, their time, their body and their world."

This website allows me to plug in my daily activity and food eaten and does magical calculations! I can see calories, protein, fat, and carbs eaten in pie chart form! I can use a cool little gage to "rate" how well I do each day at working towards my "DARES": Lose Weight & Exercise Regularly. There are tons of articles and experts writing on all sorts of health related topics and a huge community of people just like me trying to better themselves.

I have always identified with the LIVESTRONG mission...and have owned a thousand bijillion LIVESTRONG bracelets since the very beginning of Lance Armstrong's campaign. Part of me did this because I am passionate for the search for a cure for cancer and also because I want to jump Lance's bones. Sorry, I'm just being honest! At one time we even had a Lance Armstrong poster on the side of our fridge for me to drool over each morning. My very good friend Grace sent it to me and Trevor allowed me to worship it for about a year and then mandated that it be removed.

Hopefully my recently re-adopted LIVESTRONG bracelet will remind me of the biggger picture and my goals each day as I work my way through this challenge.

I will accomplish this goal if it KILLS me. I thank you all for supporting me through my schizophrenic quest for health. Your comments and words of encouragement really have helped motivate me and I hope you continue to read and support from afar.

I agree with Melissa! You are so strong, not weak. And for the love of Pete, you don't suck! I know I never felt I deserved to take care of myself or let others nurture me. I used to feel so guilty or uncomfortable whenever anyone said or did anything nice to me. I think my struggle with weight problems stemmed from this.

Enough about me... Please don't beat yourself up. You are working at it, you are passionate about it, and old habits are soooo hard to break. But you are beginning new habits that will stick. Just be sure that your desire comes from a place of love for yourself.

I can so completely relate to this ongoing struggle. I wish you the best of luck with this goal and like everyone else I have to agree that continuing to seek improvement and set goals takes alot of strength. So give yourself a pat on the back for not giving up - you will get there, I will get there, we will all get there if we just keep trying!